I understand all of that. I'm just telling you what I've seen people say.The point is that whether you're flying X-Plane or FSX, you need to adjust the settings if you want a more realistic flying experience. That is to say that complaining about having to adjust the controls in X-Plane is much ado about nothing.

There's no doubt that settings need to be fine tuned. Geofa is correct though, and I too would recommend this, go for an intro flight. I think it will greatly change your opinion on just how stable small panes are. The 172 I fly, when trimmed, you would think had auto pilot in it, but it doesn't. With clear, smooth air, GA aircraft do fly like they're on rails. Amazing pieces of engineering, a bird could only wish for such a smooth flight.

Edited January 3, 201214 yr by VegaSS

Go into your Settings/Operations and Warnings menu. Set "flight models per frame" to 2 or 3.Please post back if it's fixed or not.

Thanks, setting it to 2 fixed it, and your mod greatly improves the feel of the plane. Between this, and the Cloud Puff tweak, I can now fly XP-10 at higher graphic settings. Running it at default, just wasn't doing it for me. Now the only thing holding me back from getting the full version is recovering enough disk space for it. Curious though, does increasing the flight model setting have any drawbacks? (ie: performance, or affects FM fidelity?)

Edited January 3, 201214 yr by tf51d

Thanks, setting it to 2 fixed it, and your mod greatly improves the feel of the plane. Between this, and the Cloud Puff tweak, I can now fly XP-10 at higher graphic settings. Running it at default, just wasn't doing it for me. Now the only thing holding me back from getting the full version is recovering enough disk space for it. Curious though, does increasing the flight model setting have any drawbacks? (ie: performance, or affects FM fidelity?)

You're welcome.Increasing the flight models per frame has absolutely no drawback whatsoever. It's got to do with how fast your PC is compared to what X Plane is pumping out in the flight model.

I highly doubt, that X-Plane is capable of modeling these small surfaces

I highly doubt you"re qualified to make such a statement.

I highly doubt you"re qualified to make such a statement.

Perhaps not. But I'll want real proof.Perhaps I can get the specs for the previous Cessna Skycatchers vertical stab & rudder. Then we'll see if X-plane could have prevented Cessna from loosing two prototypes due to spins. I doubt it, qualified or not. Last year someone else was convinced that it could have saved the two planes.After that, we'll compare & compute the thickness of blunt trailing edges on the ailerons of aerobatic aircraft. I'll expect a detailed report, as to the performance enhancing changes.Nope. I don't believe X-Plane can achieve full duplication, based on 100% of correct dimensions. If it could, it would better wind tunnel testing, as well as other design programs. I know of quite a few aircraft that required stab & rudder changes after initial test flights. If..............only they'd have used X-Plane....

With the 100% accurate information, the flight model can fly smack on the numbers.

Since I'm being challanged on qualifications (by others) , then fine.Produce a model that mimics the constant speed prop settings, & proper numbers. I haven't yet, found anything close.

Nope. I don't believe X-Plane can achieve full duplication, based on 100% of correct dimensions. If it could, it would better wind tunnel testing, as well as other design programs. I know of quite a few aircraft that required stab & rudder changes after initial test flights. If..............only they'd have used X-Plane....

Sure Larry... I heard Ferrari bought Codemasters F1 2011 to test their new 2012 F1 race cars instead of using their multi million dollar wind tunnel.

Larry, I've told you about my Duchess at least half a dozen times. You haven't purchased it. And I'm certainly not comping you one just to prove a point. It has constant speed props that WORK like constant speed props. Now, if you refuse to buy it and try it, then that's not my concern. But don't go saying X Plane CAN'T do it, when I have given you an example of where it can.The DC-3 is another example. CS props that actually WORK properly and can slow the plane down.

I once posted pics of a bunch of different "appendages" that are attached to various aircraft, to change the stall characteristics. I highly doubt, that X-Plane is capable of modeling these small surfaces, that change the airflow enough to totally change the flight characteristic.

Think I once answered it as well :rolleyes:The short answer is YES, but your question is kind of irrelevant and I'll show you why.As you say, these vortex generators change the stall/high AoA characteristics of the wing. Now, lets talk a bit about the X-Plane wing:In X-Plane and real, the wing is separated into 2 entity's1. We have the physical 3D wing. It's has an area, span, sweep, dihedral, incidence, chords etc. that the sim uses for various calculations.2. Now, if you take a thin slice of a real 3D wing, you would see something like this;In X-Plane you would also see something like this, we call it an Airfoil. You can now imagine a tiny vortex generator sitting on top of one of those wings front edge.HOWEVER, X-Plane does NOT use this 2D shape to determine it's aerodynamic properties.Why not?Because it's just too impractical. The designer would have to move around thousands or millions of tinynodes in 3D to make a complete 3D wing and STILL the airfoil shape would be linear between the dots...!In addition it would probably give a severe FPS hit!So, instead X-Plane describes the airfoils mathematically like this;http://www.xplanefre...ten/DIV/afl.jpgRed= drag, green=lift, yellow= pitching moment. AoA increases to the right (x-axis).So to model your vortex generator, I would alter this airfoil by changing the curvessomething like the fat lines I put in (just an example).Now, I COULD also add a bunch of little physical objects/wings on top of the 3D wing and alsoget some kind of vortex generator effect, but that would probably not be very accurate and become an aerodynamicalmess. But in theory it could be done. X-Plane models downwash etc from one object/wing to another.In addition, should you find real airfoil data of wings with vortex generators, the effect of those would be INCLUDEDin them, so no need to worry about them in that case either (only visually).The airfoil method will give you the result you need B)M

Edited January 3, 201214 yr by MortenM

this thread turned into a very constructive, interesting reading about the flight models!!x-plane seems to be able to handle it. i'd appeciate if somebody close to laminar could consult them, so that they tweak the default planes and default settings into one of the next updates.thanks for the new tone here...

thanks for the new tone here...

Yes, we try to reply to the naysayers with dry humor while Morten blinds them with science. :(

Well why we are talking about science I still have not gotten a good answer to my stability questions which have been clearly stated... :(

I don't know, I wondered if/when the flight model of xplane goes funny it could have something to do with the blade element theory. This is all just having a bit of a guess of course. Perhaps the rate at which calculations are done is sometimes too slow for the realtime effects that are happening, especially when you get things like oscillations in the aircraft. I throw that out there because if you have ever worked with an oscilloscope you may have been tricked in to seeing something that was not there because your sample rate was too slow. You see a pattern, a waveform repeating and it looks ok but if you had a higher sample rate you would actually see a completely different waveform. I could imagine this effect could happen to some degree.

Hard to comment on aircraft I didn't make, but one source of stability problems for sure is on aircraftthat use artificial stability. You use it for stuff like yawdampers, or aircraft that fly at extreme speeds,are extremely light and such. Anyway, it's a can of worms if you don't know what you are doing. Take the default C172 as an example.Apparently he has set everything to 0, but he set "This highspeed system is in use above 1 kt".I would have set that to 9999 kts instead - just to be 100% sure it is dead. Probably nothing though.

Would you be able to point a novice to where one sets this variable? Even my favorite aircraft the F33 shows negative static and dynamic stability tendancies though the good imho overwhelms the bad and still makes this plane my favorite on any sim.Imho the defaults are greatly unstable both static and dynamic, along with way too fast of a reaction on the roll/pitch axis. I am sure this is what causes the negativity to what one will naturally try when trying the sim (c172) and that is a shame because judgements will be made on the basis of this.